


Reunion

by BeeDaily



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28680180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeeDaily/pseuds/BeeDaily
Summary: The last person Lily expects to see at her law conference is the first boy she'd ever kissed.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 30
Kudos: 322





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this last week from a tumblr prompt: "childhood friends running into each other years later."

She knew that hair.

It was a glimpse—a fleeting hint of familiar dark chaotic strands protruding above the multitude of milling heads inside the crowded hotel lobby. Lily stopped where she stood, certain— _certain_ …but that was foolish, surely? It was hair. Billions of people had hair. Even distinctive hair like that. And what would he be doing _here_ , what were the _chances_ …She darted left, slipping through other conference attendees, following the bobbing head of black. Her fingers toyed absently with the lanyard around her neck. Her feet kept moving. She was closing in. But— _shit_ —he was turning into the next doorway. She’d lose him—

“Potter!” she shouted.

The bobbing black head stopped in the doorway threshold. He turned.

Something pulled inside Lily’s chest.

God, it _was._

His mouth—an older mouth; familiar features spread across a matured frame, sharper and wider—formed her name. A question. His head tilted.

She squirmed around the last huddled group of conference-goers blocking her path. A middle-aged skeletal bloke shot her an annoyed look as she prodded past him. A server carrying a tray of canapés swerved around her. She wished the tray had been alcohol. She might need it. She wasn’t sure.

James Potter had grown up to be tall. Cresting six feet, easily. His limbs were long, his chest broad, but his hair—that _hair_ —hadn’t changed a bit. Neither had his smile: bright, crooked, with the same infectious delight he’d managed so easily at eleven, now captured just the same in a man of twenty-four.

Twenty-four. They were twenty-four now. She hadn’t seen him in thirteen years.

“Lily Evans,” he said, audibly this time, and the smile grew brighter. “Shit.”

“Shit,” Lily repeated, laughing. Now that there was nowhere to go, no further crowds to weave through, no mop of dark hair to stalk, she was not quite sure what to do. She hadn’t thought past the part of just confirming it was him. Somehow, magically, him. Strange, strange, _strange._ Now they were standing before each other and—

And he was good-looking.

Had been, back then, at eleven. But that was eleven, and those things didn’t often last. Features shifted. Bodies changed. Conventions came and went at whim. Who could keep up?

James Potter could, apparently.

Not that that was the point. She hadn’t chased him down because he was fit. She could only see his head, for Christ’s sake. She hadn’t known. Not about the height, about the posh specs and the twinkling hazel eyes, about the tanned, sculpted forearms revealed beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down. It wasn’t—

He eyed her, eyeing him. “Do we…hug…or…?”

She snorted. “I don’t know.”

“Reckon I ruined it by asking.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Not as natural now.”

“Yes, quite ruined.”

“Ah, well. Will do better next time. Meet again in another…what’s it been? A decade or so?”

“Thirteen years, by my count.”

“ _Thirteen?_ Bloody hell, I can’t wait another thirteen years. I’ll be dead. Let’s just—”

And then somehow he was hugging her, and Lily was laughing again, and her fingers were digging into his back as she clutched him to her.

He had a nice back, James Potter did.

A nice smell, too.

The first boy she’d ever kissed remembered to shower. Lovely.

In the past ten seconds, she’d grown greedy and impetuous. As he pulled away, she darted up on her toes and dropped a hasty kiss to his cheek. Stolen, like a criminal. She was in a hotel lobby filled with barristers, and not a single one could convict her, so stealthy was she.

His fingers trailed down her arm as their bodies detangled. Her skin burned along the path.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, stepping back. She really, really needed to step back. “I mean, it’s good to see you—strange to see you, really, but—you’re a barrister?”

It didn’t fit the James Potter in her head. The boy who’d grown up alongside her, had lived in the sprawling, noble house at the top of the hill, running wild with the lot of them in Cokesworth, until he wasn’t. That boy had certainly had the cleverness and confidence to pull off law, but not the patience or deference to its structures and politics. He would’ve collapsed under the piles of paperwork. He would have crowed agony at the rules, the formalities, the bureaucracy. Had that swotty boarding school his parents’ packed him off to changed him so very much?

James pulled a face. “Fuck me, no. I’m running the catering for the conference. My mum—”

“—owned a restaurant,” Lily recalled, somehow delighted not to have pegged him wrong. She closed her eyes wistfully. “God, that’s right. When you moved, we were all bereft. I think I still smell that eggplant appetizer of hers in my dreams.”

“The caponata?” His grin turned sneaky. “She still has it on the menu.”

“Where?”

“ _Casa._ SoHo.”

Lily had heard of it. To think, James Potter, her childhood friend and mild fixation, just a few tube stops away, for who knew how long. “So you’re in London?”

“Since university,” he confirmed. Then his head tilted, and the sneaky smile turned coy. “So _you’re_ a barrister? In London?”

“Yes.” She waved her conference lanyard like a white flag, surrender. “Wildly disappointed?”

“No. It fits.” Humour weaved through his voice—deeper and cooler now, all grown up. “No one could ever win an argument with you. And I tried. It was fun.”

He’d been a menace. He’d taken such delight from getting a rise out of her. But even as children, talking with him had been addicting. There were so few who could match wits with her, even fewer who didn’t take it personally, who dusted themselves off after a rousing debate and stuck out their hand, a shake of respect for the good time. James Potter had been like that. It was why she’d cornered him behind a tree in the park where they all used to play, just before his parents had packed up house and he’d left for boarding school. With his back against the tree bark, she’d pressed her lips against his and waited to see what he did with it.

He’d cupped her chin with both of his hands and pressed his lips harder against hers.

It was closed-mouths, mere seconds. A first for both of them.

But to this day, Lily’s knees still went weak when someone held her face.

Silly. Stupid. She talked about work to make the memory go away.

“A bit less fun now. It’s mostly forms and deadlines and”—she waved her hand around the room—“swotty, deadly dull networking conferences. I’m just out of school. I hardly do anything yet.”

“But you’re good at it,” James stated, definitive.

She didn’t bother to hide her preen. Was wary by how much pleasure she took out of his automatic confidence in her. “Yes. I’m very good at it.”

They stared at each other, grinning.

He had a girlfriend. Lily was certain of it. There was no way this man did not have a significant other. Or maybe there was a very good reason, because she knew absolutely nothing about him. She hadn’t seen him in thirteen years. Entire lives were lived in thirteen years. Who knew what kind of person he was now? He could cut a dashing figure, hold a conversation, but maybe he also cut up bodies in his flat on Tuesdays. Maybe he bit his toenails. Maybe he liked _The Big Bang Theory._ Maybe he drank milk straight from the carton and then put it back in the fridge.

“You didn’t grow up ugly, James Potter,” she said.

“I looked you up on Instagram a few times,” he replied immediately. “You never post pictures of yourself. But I like your cat.”

“His name is Bosley.”

“I know.”

Lily squinted at him. “What else do you know?”

Hazel eyes gleamed. “Interesting question.”

James Potter’s hands were much larger now. If he worked with his mum in her restaurant, they were probably rough—calloused from use, nicked with cuts and crevasses from an absent knife or oil burned too hot. Eleven-year-old James’s hands had been cool and soft. This James’s hands wouldn’t be.

Lily quelled a shiver.

“You—”

“James?” A server appeared out of the doorway behind him, looking frazzled. “They left behind a case of champagne. I don’t know how. The quiche is running low, and Darnell is feeling ill. What—”

“Send Darnell home. I’ll—” He let out a dissatisfied hum, glancing at Lily, then back at the server. His lips pulled into a frown. He swept a hand through his hair. “Sorry—”

Lily waved him off, though her spirits sank. “No, don’t be silly. Work calls. Feed the hungry. Go.”

He hesitated, his eyes skimming her. “Will you—we’re just catering the event tonight. Swotty and deadly dull, yeah? So you’ll probably skive as soon as you can.”

“No.” She didn’t have any reason to say it so firmly, so quickly. That was just the way it came out. “Work calls for me too. I’ll be here.”

“Yeah?” The frown righted slowly.

She couldn’t believe how ridiculous she was being. Maybe how ridiculous they were both being. _She_ could be a serial killer, for all he knew. Did he not care for the health and safety of his own pretty little head?

Her plan _had_ been to duck out of this conference opening mixer as soon as was physically possible. They were unbearable. That shouldn’t change.

“Yeah,” she said instead.

She was eleven years old, heart fluttering behind a tree. She was an idiot.

“Good.” His body turned, but he was still looking at her. He nodded and repeated, “Good.”

Lily lifted her hand. “Thanks for the hug. See you in thirteen years?”

He smiled. “Something like that.”

She watched his back as he turned through the doorway, stared at the familiar mop of hair until it disappeared around the next corner.

She pivoted on her heels slowly, feeling silly and prickly.

In her pocket, her phone vibrated. She pulled it out and absently glanced at the screen.

She laughed.

James Potter had requested to follow her on Instagram. And he sent her a message.

**You didn’t grow up ugly either, Lily Evans,** it read.

She was twenty-four years old, heart fluttering in the middle of a hotel.

She shook her head, and pressed ACCEPT.


End file.
